Fifty-six million U.S. internet households, 46% of the total, are cord cutters, showing the dominance of streaming video services, Parks Associates said Tuesday. An additional 12% are cord never, it added.

The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) is sending takedown notices to Spotify to “remove thousands of unlicensed uses of NMPA members’ works” in podcasts on the platform, NMPA said in a news release Tuesday. “Over 2,500 detections of infringement” are covered by the takedown notices, it said. The effort is a continuation of a cease and desist letter NMPA issued in May. “Podcasts are a growing source of revenue for songwriters and publishers, and it is essential that podcasts provide lawfully produced entertainment,” NMPA President David Israelite said in the release. “This is not hard to do, and Spotify knows, and has known, how to fix this problem for their users.” Spotify didn’t comment.

Streaming services are expected to ramp up their spending on content by 6% in 2025, to $95 billion, surpassing commercial broadcasters and becoming the largest funder of content worldwide, Ampere Analysis wrote Tuesday. It said ad-supported and subscription-based services are expected to account for 39% of content spending worldwide this year. U.S. commercial broadcasters are cutting spending in the face of advertising revenue challenges from linear viewing declines, it said, adding that outside the U.S., commercial broadcasters have been more resilient and are expected to maintain their content investment in 2025.

Regional sports network Altitude Sports is back on Comcast's cable channel lineup in Colorado, New Mexico and parts of Kansas and Arizona, Altitude said Tuesday. The agreement between the parties ends a blackout that began in 2019, the same year that Altitude brought an antitrust complaint against Comcast (see 1911180062). The suit was voluntarily dismissed in 2023.

Fox Corp. plans to launch a direct-to-consumer streaming service in 2025, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said during a call with analysts Tuesday. The streaming service will repackage existing Fox content, he said. Fox doesn't want to turn cable viewers into streaming customers, "so our subscriber expectations will be modest, and we're going to price the service accordingly." He said to broaden the reach of the broadcast of Sunday's Super Bowl, Fox will livestream the game on its free, ad-supported Tubi platform. Murdoch said the end of the Venu sports streaming joint venture with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery (see 2501100002) was a "disappointment, [but] the legal distractions around the business became increasingly difficult to bear."

Linear TV's decline in the U.S. "is irreversible," but it won't disappear all at once, S&P wrote investors Wednesday. Instead, watch for a steady, yearslong process, with the pace of pay TV cord-cutting abating over the next two years due to Charter Communications' video and bundling strategy, S&P said. It said pay TV likely saw a 6.7% subscriber decline in 2024, but 2026 should bring it closer to 5.8%. It predicted that advertising would shrink more quickly than affiliate fees as audience ratings are dropping faster than cord-cutting. It said general entertainment networks are on pace for double-digit audience losses and single-digit price cuts for ad inventory, while sports-focused networks' revenues should fare better -- though they will still slow. Programmers will likely focus on managing their operating costs to keep pace with the shrinking revenues, it said. S&P also identified trends that will likely increase, such as eliminating original content on smaller networks, consolidating operating teams and focusing more on cheaper, unscripted reality shows.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Mike Flood, R.-Neb., want C-SPAN added to the YouTube, Hulu and FuboTV virtual multichannel video programming distribution platform channel lineups. In a letter Wednesday to the CEOs of the streamers, the lawmakers urged the addition of C-SPAN so that its non-partisan coverage of Congress and the White House will remain accessible in a cord-cutting era. They said the per-subscriber cost of C-SPAN is a "relative pittance" compared to what Fox News or CNN cost, while its programming "is irreplaceable." "While carrying C-SPAN may not dramatically grow your companies’ subscriber numbers, it will provide your current subscribers an essential resource for understanding what their government is doing," the two said. Retired C-SPAN co-CEO Susan Swain applauded the Wyden/Flood letter in a post on X.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr appeared to signal in posts on X Wednesday that the agency could consider stepping up enforcement of the Calm Act, which combats loud advertisements. “I’ve asked my team to look into this,” Carr said in a post. He was replying to a request for FCC intervention on loud ads; his Chief of Staff Greg Watson affirmed the response. The FCC sought comment on the effectiveness of Calm Act enforcement in 2021 under then-Chair Jessica Rosenworcel (see 2105210043), but that proceeding didn’t prompt rules or a visible increase in enforcement. MVPD groups said then that most complaints the FCC receives concerning Calm Act violations either aren’t specific enough to be actionable or concern streaming services.

With programmers facing ever-increasing competition from Netflix and Amazon, speculation on mergers and acquisitions will ramp up this year, particularly around the future of Warner Bros. Discovery, MoffettNathanson told investors Tuesday. It said the most likely consolidation targets include film studios, cable networks and streaming services, and a WBD deal with Comcast makes the most sense. There also could be speculation about whether Paramount Global will make a play for WBD, or at least for Warner Bros. studio, HBO and Max, MoffettNathanson said. In addition, it predicted "less-contentious affiliate fee negotiations" in 2025.

Nexstar programming is back up on Altice USA's cable lineup. Nexstar and Altice said Saturday they had reached a carriage agreement, ending a blackout that began earlier this month (see 2501130068).